Gay Sheep and American Politics...

The world is more aware of the intense political debate "gay marriage" is in the United States. However, how about gay sheep!!

scientists in the Oregon State University are experimenting on genetic treatment of "gay sheep" to make it "straight". And there is a hue and cry over it!

However there couple of issues here. This is what my position is...

a: Homosexuality is a genetic defect and (seems to be possibly) curable.

b: If it is a "genetic defect" then the person is as "handicapped" as (say) a wheelchair person and he should get the support of the society (similar to a preferred partaking spot)

c: On the contrary if this is a defect then the "cure" should also be searched.

d: Neither those who want to be rectified be prevented from doing so (either via force or via non availability of procedure) NOR those who do not want to be rectified be forced to take the procedure.

e: The above (d) should also apply to the parents. The parents who wish to take (or risk) adding a genetic potion or strap to prevent the offspring "orientation" being gay should be allowed to do so and those who want to follow the "laissez-faire" forces of nature be allowed too!

That should be a good neoliberal approach. What do you think?

APOCALYPTO – A Review

Before I start with the review, I would start by concurring with a large variety of reviewers that Mel Gibson better remain behind the camera than in front. He is a class behind and an embarrassment in front.

The movie starts with a quote by the great historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." That is the theme of the movie. For two and a half hours Mel Gibson presents the audience the collapse of a civilization and how it was so easy for the Spaniards to conquer present day Mexico.

The movie addresses this central philosophy pretty well. It presents to us a dichotomy in the Mayan society – the laissez-faire rural society and slavish industrial urban society. The rural society represented by its protagonist Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) explains it very well – “this is my jungle, my father hunted here, I hunt here and my son will hunt here.” You may call it the primitive hunter-gatherer crowd but it was the Free Society as represented by Rousseau, Condorcet and Voltaire. On the other hand we see a near-slavish urban society controlled by its priest class with its bloody sacrifices. It is the clash between the societies that underscores the movie. It also shows how society is in tension between the controllers who have no regard for human lives and the ordinary people who want to carry on daily their lives.

The movie is in Yucatec – a Mayan language with English subtitles. Accordingly, the casts are non-celebrities and mostly Native Mayans from Mexico. Rudy Youngblood does an excellent job as Jaguar Paw. Dalia Hernández as Seven (Jaguar’s wife) mesmerizes the audience not only with her sultry beauty but also her acting skills depicting fear and survival actions. We hope to see more of them in the coming movies.

The movie starts with simple jungle life. A tapir is killed and the body parts distributed including everything. The element of practical jokes of the jungle life is displayed. Also the quintessential element of village life - sitting down around fire hearing the village elders tell a tale – was excellently displayed. So the first half an hour of the movie was spent in immersing the audience in an atmosphere of Mayan village.

Except one small incident. During the hunt they encountered a group that are trying to flee so as to “escape to start a new life”. They had fear in their faces. We did not understand the meaning of this till next day morning when there was an attack on the village.

It was half an hour since the start, the idyllic nature of the movie came to a gory end. We see a band or royals come and take the villagers as prisoners. Jaguar Paw too is taken but not before hiding his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernández) and young son (Carlos Emilio Baez), in a deep crevice.

The prisoners are taken to the Mayan capital by the leader of the warriors - Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo). The passage gives us a good visualization of the countryside and also the Maya city. If you are seeing the movie please see this part very closely. We are presented with a very good picture of the urban Mayan civilization with all the pomp. Also the transition from the prehistoric rural culture to the urban culture was also pretty cool!

They are the taken to the central temple for sacrifice to the gods. The scene was quite gory with the heart being pulled out of the stomach with the victim still alive. However, thanks to a interesting melodramatic event the sacrifices are stopped and the prisoners disposed of. I don’t want to say any more as it would be “spoiling” but since the storyline is very well known, I don’t know now much I could “spoil”.

Before I come back to the theme, I would make a cursory look back to my own history of India. In around sixth century BC, India too was ravaged by the priest class who performed large-scale animal sacrifices to appease the gods. This led to the rise of opposing and anthropocentric schools of thought. Furthermore, decay of Indian society in the tenth century AD and the eighteenth century led to Islamic and British invasions. We see that the armies who could ward off the powerful Hun invasions and match Alexander the Great could not handle Islamic and British invasions. Clearly, we see that in Indian History whenever the society was fragmented and destroyed from within there was a foreign invasion that succeeded. Will Durant was right.

The Mayan civilization lasted from circa 1500BC to the Spanish arrival in 1520AD. It was a civilization lasting for nearly three thousand years. During this time, its advances in Mathematics, architecture, astronomy are not only great but in some cases unparalleled. Its astronomy was one of the most accurate in the world not to mention recognizing the Orion nebula as a nebula (strong eyes?) without the use of a telescope. So the question remains how come such a great civilization come crashing down.

The answer is given and explained in the movie. The Mayans were killing its own citizens to service the gods to have the Sun to rise and the drought removed. And therein lies the political message in this movie.

So what is the western civilization doing? It is sacrificing its young for the Oil gods while an invasion is underway. This is possible the subtle political message that is creating storm over tea-cups. If it is so then it is very starkly put.

Like all roses the move has thorns too but real sharp ones. The violence and the blood-shed in the movie is really “over the top”. Please don’t see the movie with your children even though they should (as future citizens) get the message.

Last but not the least, the village elder/storyteller emphasizes one central weakness of Man – his greed. We fear that his greed will outrun the earth. That is what the owl said that he saw a deep hole in Man and that cannot be filled by his wants. Another brutal message right in the beginning telling us that the movie would be really heavy.

I tend to come back the theme always. What would be the future of our (neoliberal) civilization. A civilization one hand interconnected via the web, via increasing trade and people to people contacts yet increasingly fractious with national and religious demagoguery. Would a new anthropocentric movement would save the day OR we shall the civilization descend into destruction with within.

What will be forthcoming? Nous verrons!

For trailer please click here. Please choose the High definition with size appropriate to your screen size.

The American Congress Elections

The elections are over and as you have noticed, the Democrats have won or rather swept. Given the limited scope of the contest in US House elections, thanks to gerrymandering, I consider this a clean sweep. But let me take a step back and look at the two major US parties and dissect them a bit.

The Democratic Party has been always a strange coalition of North-Eastern intelligentsia, Southern conservatives and Pacific Coast Environmentalists-Liberal-libertarians. I come under the last branch.

The Republican Party has a more interesting philosophical “composition”. It is a stranger coalition of “Christian Religious Right”, “Nation-State Conservatives i.e. Tories” and “Free Market liberals” (or as some would say instead – State-Capitalists i.e. industry interests).

And the preceding years there was a tension between the Conservative wing and the Free Market wing over immigration. The Nation State Conservatives want a Strong State but was unwilling the pay for the Government – the result – runaway debt, badly managed Iraq war (war on the cheap becoming defeat)

Pundits from the left and the right have commented on this election and most agree that this was a major backlash against the Republican Party. But let us step back and check on what is to come.

The Bush Legacy – or rather the lack thereof

Bush needs (badly) a legacy to be left behind. For all the dance-drama to become a Winston Churchill II has failed. The Iraq war wont be won by the next two years (despite how loud the conservative blogs bark) and so Bush would be known as a President that led to a (very questionable) war that bled America like Vietnam. He has to find out another way to leave a good legacy behind (or a very bad one will remain) and he could get a interesting friend with the democrats.

The Democratic (non) Manifesto

The motley crew of democrats that won the elections there was a common underlying theme. Anti-Bush. This underlying abstraction may be translated into concretes that may be mutually exclusive. For example, the anger against Bush for his anti-gay efforts for a Dem from California may not be shared by one from Georgia.

Therein lies Ms Nancy Pelosi’s non-Manifesto. She knew whatever she says would be torn up by the Republican Machine. She knew that the Republicans are committing suicide and when one’s enemies are committing suicide one should get out of the way.

What made it a success was that each candidate worked in his constituency looking at the very problems of his region. So there was no national level position to the Republicans to attack!

What Next!

Now these are the real issues that I need the new government that needs to address asap.

• Iraq War: Some sort of a closure is required. Any sensible person would agree.

• Education: The United States currently lags way behind not only in education per se but also the drive of the students to take up higher education! It is the latter that needs to be addressed.

• A neoliberal attitude: Mr. Clinton went in for NAFTA. The congress must work towards integrating the resourceful “undocumented labor” and work not only towards a guest program but also a mechanism for labor movement in the NAFTA region!

• Fiscal conservatism: A need for balancing the budgets is the order of the day. If needed, taxes need to be raised. Deficit of today is the taxation of tomorrow. You may say that with increased GDP the deficit would be taken care of. The answer to that is if there were no deficits taxes could come down! In whatever way you look at it, you are asking your children to pay for your spending today. Now you may take an exception for capital outlays today but most of the deficit is coming from revenue expenditures

I kept the list short so that it is effective.

A New Approach

I’m writing this a few weeks after the elections. As usual wave of work and problems have descended my life. I seem to have some interesting collection of visitors from different parts of the globe who very diligently visit my site. I apologize to them.

According to a blogger, I seem to have the wrong approach. Instead of writing a nice essay of a major issue, it is better that I address a topical and interesting issue of the day and give my inputs in a para or two. In the week-end, I could write my “editorial”. If the weekend did not allow the weekday tid-bits would be there,

But some topics have piled up. This week I’ll address two points. Firstly, I’ll address the American Elections and then a review of an interesting movie.